EasyImg, to mention at first, is a very different kind of web service which can be very powerful under the creative hands.

It is a highly customizable web-based graphics engine that enables anyone to insert "instantly created custom images" to their websites.

How it works?

EasyImg works by sending a formatted query to the service as the source of an image. An example will describe it better:

<img src="http://images.easyimg.com/fd592fce/h-60/w-480/bw-2/r-15/bc-e0dede/fc-fcfbdc/c-fc2671/font-Tahoma/size-30/banner.png?text=WRD Test Banner" />

will return:

 where:

• fd592fce = is the token for my account
• h-60 = height is 60px
• w-480 = width is 480px
• bw-2 = border width is 2px
• and you can possibly guess the rest easily..

Besides the standard image properties, it is possible to use various fonts, rotate the final image, add gradients & more.

And, as it doesn’t use any JavaScript or CSS hack, it is totally compatible with any browser.

EasyImg can be set to re-create the image every time it is called or use caching for faster usage.

Also, it is not a must to host every image generated at the system. They can be downloaded as a single ZIP file anytime.

Where can I use it?

Primarily, it is a great fit to be used in websites where images must/can be customized like:

• users customizing the look & feel of their accounts (you may need to create rounded corners with different colors)
• usage of rotation
• usage of custom fonts
• no image editing software (ideal for customers who are not into webdesign but want to update the look of websites – can be integrated into CMSs)

And, it is a perfect fit for special cases like dynamic barcode generation (just use the barcode font).

EasyImg comes with different plans where a free one exists as well.

You can see how powerful it can be with the options it offers & from the samples. Or, you can play with the online canvas.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

FontCapture is a simple & free web application with an impressive function: it turns any handwriting into a font.

It does not require any software and works in few steps:

• download (PDF) & print a special template
• fill it with your handwriting
• scan & upload the template

The service automatically creates your font & presents you the download file.

Also, just before downloading the generated fonts, you can see a full-preview & decide to re-create a new one or not.

P.S. The service is currently in beta status.

myFontbook is a free web-based service that enables anyone to browse their font collections.

It can be used with or without registering (free), but by signing in, you can tag & categorize your fonts for reaching them quicker in the future.

A custom text can be displayed with all fonts in both swatch & list views. Also, gylphs view allows you to quickly scan characters and symbols.

The font metrics view displays guides to show default kerning, text baseline, and median height. And, a selected font can be printed easily with several style samples by the click of a button.

Stripemania is a free web application for creating stripe patterns with ease.

It enables you to add up to 5 colors with different gradients & define the background, orientation and stripe/spacing widths.

The generated images can be downloaded as PNG or transparent GIF files.

Also, stripes generated by other users can be viewed & downloaded.

CSS galleries are beautiful resources for getting inspired & promoting the websites we created.

In order to submit websites to these galleries, you need to:

• have a list of the galleries
• know which ones are more popular
• browse all of them one-by-one

MeeCSS is a free web-based application which eases this process. It is not an automated submission system which would not be ethical.

It simply asks you to fill the information that will be required (name, e-mail, website address, etc.) & with the help of an iframe, you can submit to the galleries one-by-one by copy-pasting the fields you had filled.

It also displays to CSS galleries sorted by pageranks & enables you to select which galleries to submit.

P.S. it would be much easier if the selected fields were auto-selected (or better: auto-copied).

Pictaculous is a free web-based service which generates the color palette of an image you upload.

And, it provides color palette suggestions from Adobe Kuler & Colourlovers which can be used with the image.

Once the color palette is created, it can be downloaded as an Adobe Swatch file.

Pictaculous also enables you to send the image & get results via e-mail (which is nice for using the service in phones).

There are various web-based image editors that help a lot specially when you do not have the right image editing software with you.

AIE, an open source Ajax image editor, is one of them but with a difference: it can be installed under your websites.

So, besides using it as a standard image editor, it can be integrated with other applications you use (like image galleries, blogging apps., etc) by simply setting the "images folder" of these applications.

AIE has great features like:

• resizing images
• cropping images
• rotate/flip images
• apply filters
• add text with a text tool
• apply watermarks & more..

It is built with Ext JS & uses PHP+ImageMagick on the server-side. For a demo, click here.

PXtoEM.com is a website that makes converting PX values to EM values easier.

Conversions are based on 16px browser default size & you simply:

• Select your body font size
• And get the conversion
• Or, manually enter PX or EM values to get custom conversions.

The CSS file of the values you’ve choosen can be get based on the typography.css portion of Blueprint CSS to setup a default typography.

Favicons are one of the must-haves of websites.

They help making:

• a website unique
• easier to differenciate between tabs
• easier to find in bookmarks..

favikon is an easy to use online favicon creator.

You upload an image, if the image uploaded is bigger than a standard favikon size, you can crop it & that’s it.

Lorem2 is a very simple website with an useful content.

It presents lorem ipsum content in various formats:

• short paragraphs
• long paragraphs
• short lists
• long lists

You may also like a previous post at WebResourcesDepot: Lorem Ipsum Generators.